Here's a couple more pictures of Phil from the New Zealand Open taken from the Australian PGA web site. His pants are slightly less flamboyant.

Phil's professional partner, Richard Lee, finished tied for 4th in the tournament. I couldn't find out where the team of Richard Lee and Phil Keoghan finished as the Australian PGA site only listed the top 10 teams and Phil's team wasn't in the top 10.

National Library of AustraliaYesterday at 9:11pm · Today The Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan came in to visit the Library - researching the H.F. Opperman collection for a forthcoming documentary. He was not the last to arrive, and will remain in the race! http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2604354

Award-winning television host Phil Keoghan has credited his hard-working West Coast grandparents for his achievements.

Keoghan, 46, received his New Zealand Order of Merit insignia at an investiture ceremony at Government House in Wellington today.

"My first thought went to my grandparents. It was like a thank you to them for giving me the opportunities.

The Santa Monica-based host of the Amazing Race donned a navy Prada suit and blue tie for the occasion. He has won nine Emmys as host and producer of the show, and is also an ambassador for multiple sclerosis. Today he was formally recognised for services as a television presenter and to tourism.

"My parents came up from Christchurch and my in-laws came over from Sydney so that was wonderful because we all got together as a family last night," he said.

Keoghan, who grew up in Lincoln, said he had strong memories of the time he spent with his grandparents in Westport.

"My grandfather didn't get a chance to go school, and he became a mechanic.

"My other grandfather was a carpenter and my grandmother wasn't allowed to go to college [university] because she was a girl.

"In a way, it was kind of like a way to reflect on the opportunities I have as a result of my grandparents creating opportunities for my parents."

Before today's ceremony, Keoghan had been in Sydney for the filming of a documentary about Harry Watson - the first New Zealander to ride in the Tour de France.

He is due to fly to Auckland tomorrow then onto Los Angeles.

He was one of 25 people honoured at this morning's investiture ceremony in Wellington.

HONOURED: Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan has become a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

He's been all over the world but there's still no place quite like home for Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan.

He was in Wellington today to officially become a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit at an investiture ceremony at Government House.

Keoghan, a Cantabrian by birth who now lives in Los Angeles, was honoured for his services as a television presenter and to tourism.

His show, The Amazing Race has, has won nine Primetime Emmy Awards.

However, Keoghan said his latest honour felt "more personal" than any of those wins.

"I've got my family here, and I'm at home," he said.

"But it's also being part of that group of people who are doing extraordinary things."

Keoghan, who was in New Zealand for the New Zealand Open this month, said he tried to find "any excuse" to come home, and the ceremony was a "good one".

Among other charitable ventures, Keoghan was recognised for his work mobilising international support for his home province after the Canterbury earthquakes.

After the February 22 quake that wrecked large parts of Christchurch, he immediately flew to New Zealand to film the devastation, and later worked to boost tourism to the area.

He did the same after the Rena oil spill, lending a hand to the cleanup to draw global attention to the disaster.

Keoghan said Kiwis were "blessed" to have such a beautiful country, but from a tourism point of view, its real selling point was its people

"It's being able to go to a local pub over in the West Coast and share a beer with somebody, or eat some whitebait fritters - do something distinctly New Zealand and experience the hospitality," he said.

"I always tell people, what you'll find about New Zealanders is that they will welcome you, and that's really ultimately what separates one place from another."

Emmy award-winning actor Eric Braeden - a.k.a Victor Newman on CBS's The Young and the Restless - is joining Oscar winner Adrien Brody, Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan, Olympic sprinter Carmelita Jeter, sci-fi goddess Tricia Helfer and a slew of other cool stars in the 2014 Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach Pro/Celebrity Race. The wildly popular annual event, set for April 12 in Long Beach, California, will benefit "Racing for Kids," a fundraising program that supports children's hospitals throughout the U.S.http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/article/20140318/NEWS/303189979

Logged

RFF's Golden Rule:Have RESPECT for each other, regardless of opinion. This of course includes no flaming/insulting other users and/or their posts.

It's a good interview. Among other topics, Phil talks about why the show remains popular, the live stand ups this season (sounds like they continue all season), the Dentists, why he didn't go back and watch Keith and Whitney on Survivor, etc.

Former “Survivor” players have been ripping open “Amazing Race” clues for years. “Boston” Rob and Amber, Jenna and Ethan, and Keith and Whitney have all traded in their colored buffs for giant backpacks. And while their journeys were very different, they all ended with “Amazing Race” host Phil Keoghan telling them that they were the last team to arrive and that they have been eliminated.

No team had ever gone the other way until “Race” favorites Natalie and Nadiya, “The Twinnies,” signed up for “Survivor: San Juan del Sur – Blood vs. Water.”

I spoke with Keoghan on the eve of the “Survivor” finale and had a chance to get his thoughts on what could be an “Amazing Race” win if Natalie can make it to tonight’s Tribal Council and get the votes she needs…

Watch Full Episodes of “Survivor: San Juan del Sur” and “The Amazing Race“

Gordon Holmes: The “Survivor” finale is tonight and Natalie of “Amazing Race” fame is in a decent position to win the whole thing. If she pulls it off, are you going to give Jeff Probst some grief?Phil Keoghan: (Laughs) No.Holmes: Cause I love to give Probst grief.Keoghan: I think it’s amazing. It’s the first time, if I’m not mistaken that an “Amazing Race” player has gone over to another franchise like that. Goodness knows we’ve done it a few times. She’s representing and she’s there. What an upset, right?! Nobody saw that coming.

Holmes: I was debating this with some friends; Probst gets to go to one location for 39 days while you get to go to many locations for 21 days. He gets to know one place better, while you see a wide variety of places for shorter periods of time. Who has the better gig?Keoghan: I’m sure we’d both have our arguments. I love that he owns his gig, he has a passion for “Survivor” and he’s really made that show his own. I can’t imagine that show without him. I was up for that show and now I can’t imagine having done it because I’ve been so involved in “Race.”Holmes: But is it better to see many places quickly, or to take your time and get to know one place really well?Keoghan: Well, what I like about my gig is I do get to see more and that it’s this frantic…I love the pace of the shooting. It’s without a doubt the toughest job I’ve ever done in my life as far as trying to stay on top of my game. It’s not easy. But, I feel really lucky that I’ve had this opportunity. I feel like it came in my career at the right time. There are very few gigs that would appeal to me like this. I think “Survivor” would be a fun thing to do, I was very excited about it when it was a possibility. But, ultimately it’s worked out for the best.

Grant BrandleyAviation, tourism and energy writer for the Business Herald

5:00 AM Wednesday Mar 4, 2015

The Tourism NZ cycling campaign with Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan will showcase the country as the ideal destination for a cycling holiday. The Tourism NZ cycling campaign with Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan will showcase the country as the ideal destination for a cycling holiday.

Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan is the face of a new campaign to attract United States cycle tourists to New Zealand.

Keoghan, a keen cyclist, has been hired by Tourism New Zealand to front digital and print campaigns in the US.

A Kiwi, Keoghan has just completed a 5400km ride to retrace the route of the first English-speaking team (including one Kiwi rider) in the Tour de France, soon to be released as a feature-length documentary.

The campaign was shot in December on Canterbury's Alps 2 Ocean Cycle Trail and the Queenstown Trail, and will showcase the country as the ideal destination for a cycling holiday.

Tourism New Zealand's director of marketing, Andrew Fraser, said that securing Keoghan as the face of the campaign, which launched in the United States today, was a real coup.

"Phil doesn't just have a large following in the States as host of The Amazing Race - he is also a passionate cyclist and proud Kiwi, and therefore the ideal person to be encouraging Americans to make New Zealand their next holiday destination."

Research showed that a large section of the US market was actively considering a cycling trip to New Zealand, Fraser said.

The cycle trail network spans the length of New Zealand and the cycle tourists often stayed late into March, aligning with the push to increase shoulder season travel and a wider regional spread of visitors, said Fraser.

The Amazing Race has been running in the US since 2001 and screens in more than 100 countries worldwide. In the US alone, it garnered 9.5 million viewers during its 2013-14 season. Keoghan has been the host and a producer of the US version of the show since its inception.

The campaign reflected Tourism New Zealand's wider strategy to actively target the international cycling sector as part of its focus on special interest activities - such as food and wine and golf - which have the potential to deliver increased value.

Phil Keoghan, host of "The Amazing Race," joked around with Jeff Probst, host of "Survivor," about their experiences opening coconuts with machetes, neither of which ended well. Probst said he now buys coconuts already scored, when makes them easier to open. When I asked how they'd do if they swapped shows, they both laughed and said they thought they'd keep the ones they had.

Annelies Gartner October 12, 2015, 11:22 amPhil Keoghan is the producer and host of The Amazing Race.

It’s amazing what people will go through in the hope of winning $1 million. Contestants have chewed on hairy cows’ lips, been chased down a mountain by giant wheels of cheese and jumped off buildings from frightful heights — one unlucky player even had a watermelon catapulted into her face at short range.

Now in its 27th season, The Amazing Race continues to push people to do extraordinary things at all ends of the earth and New Zealand-born host Phil Keoghan loves to see people out of their comfort zones.

“I get a huge amount of pleasure just seeing them push themselves and do things they’d never imagine they’d ever do,” he says over the phone from the US.

Keoghan says he is a bit of a daredevil himself and can rattle off a list of achievements that most of us would never dream of attempting.

“I have broken a world record (in bungee jumping) and swum across the Bosphorus and dived the world’s longest underwater cave and done all kinds of crazy things,” he says.

“I putted a golf ball across Scotland once, had dinner on top of an erupting volcano in Sicily on the top of an island called Stromboli.”

A near-death experience at age 19 on his first presenting job made Keoghan rethink his priorities in life.

“It was a shipwreck in New Zealand and it was a pivotal point in my life ... I thought that I was going to live for ever until I found myself isolated in a 22,000-tonne shipwreck, 120 feet (36.5m) under water,” he says. “I thought I was going to die and was panicking and thankfully my dive buddy came back to get me and led me out of the shipwreck.

“That really was the impetus for me to write down all the things I would’ve regretted not doing in my life had I not come out of there. That list has become a contract if you like — the motivational list to do all the things that I have done.”

Shooting 12 episodes of The Amazing Race in 21 days doesn’t allow Keoghan a lot of time to partake in the challenges the contestants face but he says he does make time to get to know teams.

At the mat that marks each pit stop, players stop to chat about the leg of the race they’ve just completed. Keoghan says sometimes you only see a few seconds of that footage but it’s his chance to catch up.

“You’ve got 11 teams running at me, at the mat, a lot of stuff has happened that I have been told about but that I haven’t seen. So the audience has seen it but I haven’t, I’ve only just got an update via text saying ‘This happened with this team, that happened with that team’,” he explains. “I do spend a lot of time with them there on the mat ... and then depending on how big the spread is with the teams I’ll be able to sit down and have a meal with them if there’s time before maybe I’m catching another flight.”

The pressure of the race means Keoghan sees teams at their best and worst but he says he and the past competitors are a close-knit group.

“I keep in contact with a lot of the teams,” he says. “It’s random, sometimes I won’t hear from a team for a year and they’ll say ‘Hey I’m coming to LA, we’re all going to get together and watch the show this Friday’.

“Once people become part of the family they’re always part of the family and teams, the alumni, they all really stay closely connected and they keep me connected. They’re pretty good about that.

“There are other teams that I hear from almost on a weekly basis that date back all the way to season one.”

And to become part of The Amazing Race alumni you first have to gain the approval of Keoghan, Lynne Spillman and her casting team.

But it’s the head of CBS who has the final say on who will join the race.

“It sometimes happens that you just pick a team because they’re just great but for the most part you’re also looking at how it all blends together to get the diversity and to get a really telegenic cast we think is going to make for a good dynamic,” Keoghan says.

“There’s no point in having redundancy where we want diversity and so we slowly start to whittle down until we get to a core group and then that group goes over to the network and the head of all of CBS, Les Moonves, he literally weighs in on whether he approves of the cast or not.”

So what does such a thrill- seeker get out of being a presenter who spends a lot of time waiting on mats for people to arrive?

“Quite frankly I’ve spent so many years now doing so many crazy things, I get as much pleasure being a part of The Amazing Race where we’re sharing these adventures with people that have never done crazy things in their lives at all.”